The current trend is towards an ongoing increase in the density of holes per unit of area and a reduction of their diameter. For this purpose, use is generally made of devices which have high-speed mandrels adapted to drive special drill bits in rotation using, for instance, compressed air turbines.
Bearing in mind the speeds involved (the device of the invention is adapted to enable more than 20 holes to be drilled per second), even apparently small mass displacements become a critical factor.
The drilling devices used up to now do not take appropriate account of this critical factor and have thus played their part in limiting the maximum drilling speed that has up to now been practicable. At present, no more than eight holes per second can be drilled with the fastest devices, which is far from market requirements in terms of the economic machining of the boards in question.